Backstage Adventures
by TheSilverArgents
Summary: When he finally got off the subway he loaded it and saw four Starbucks grandes lined up. Each cup had a word so that the line read, "Happy tech week, Jack!" Or stage manager!Katherine and tech captain!Jack AU


_A/N: Guys it is good to be back! Well, I'm not really back, not yet those of you who don't know, my laptop's hard drive got messed up and I'm hopefully getting a new one tomorrow. During these troubling lack-of-laptop times camwrites sent me a prompt asking me to write about stage manager!katherine and tech captain!jack and I haven't ben able to get to it until today! Before we start, I'd also like to add that a lot of this stuff that you're about to read has happened. I'm heavily drawing from real life situations that I have experienced first hand as someone backstage and as an actor who is super close with the stage manager. So send in prompts and enjoy!_

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><p>The first thing he notices is about her is that she does all of her work in these ridiculous fuzzy socks. She slides across the stage barking orders with swinging chestnut hair and a determined glint in her eyes. He's spoken to her once or twice before, but she seemed to be thinking about her other things while he spoke. She always has notebooks upon notebooks in her bags and seems to know everyone's line so Jack has to applaud her.<p>

But now, they've moved into the theater and out of the rehearsal room. It's Jack's turn to be as anxious as Katherine Plumber always seems to be and her anxiety just increases by the thousands. Today, for example, was not going as planned. A wire in the light board must have gotten fried because the cues kept coming and going to quickly, lights would flicker, and then the lights wouldn't come on at all. She was shouting over the phone at an electrician to come fix the board and he was trying to work with it as much as possible until the dumbass got there.

When it was time to break for lunch, he grabbed his wallet headed down to the deli across the street from the theater, grabbed a sandwich and decidedly plopped into a chair that was facing away from the theater. He sitting there, stewing in his annoyance when he heard a somewhat familiar voice ask, "Is this seat taken?"

He looked up and saw her, Katherine Plumber: stage manager extraordinaire, holding two cups of coffee in a tray and a street pretzel. She had an eyebrow raised and he gestured without a word for her to take the seat. She nodded, sat down, and pushed one of the Starbucks cups to him. "I figured you'd be the only one as pissed as I am so here, this makes you hate everything less."

Jack chuckled at that and shook his head when she offered him cream or sugar and drank some of the coffee. As the hot liquid made its way down his throat, he understood what she meant. It was hard to hate things with coffee. She took a sip of hers and sighed. "So how long did it take you to learn coffee helped?" He asked as he pinched the bridge of her nose.

"Two long-ass years. I'm at three cups a day now, but the way things are going right now I might actually need a portable IV bag with coffee making its way into my body twenty-four/seven." He pinched the bridge of his nose again, feeling a headache coming on and Katherine nodded, "Hold on, I've got something for that."

"You know there's such a thing as being too good at your job, right?" Jack snorted as she rummaged through her bag. She muttered something that sounded like "Fuck off." and then pulled out a jumbo bottle of Advil.

"Holy shit." Jack whistled, "Who carries that many pills around?"

"Hash tag: stage manager problems." She dead panned as she poured four into the palm of her hand and gave him two, downing the other two with a quick swig of coffee. Jack took the blue pills gratefully and swallowed them, not even bothering to drink anything.

"So, is that asshole electrician coming or what?" Jack asked after a beat of silence while they ate.

"No, but I might be able to get someone else to come in, but not until tomorrow." She grumbled, crossing her arms over her chest.

Jack gave her a half-smile trying to quell her anger, "I thought you'd gotten him to come for sure when you said you'd make sure he never worked in New York again."

Katherine threw her hands up in the air, "I know, right! But he still told me he had other jobs. He hung up after I threatened to shove a live wire up his ass."

Jack nearly spat out the coffee he had started to drink, "You said that?!"

Katherine nodded serenely, "Yeah that tends to upset people, I can see why he hung up."

Jack let out a breath and leaned forward in his chair with a smile playing at the corner of his lips, "Well shit, you just got twenty times hotter."

Katherine almost cracked a smile, "I'd flirt back, but I feel a migraine coming on."

"But you would flirt back, for sure?" Jack asked for clarification, his headache fading now and his smile becoming more prominent.

Katherine suddenly saw what the actresses backstage gossiped about; the confident smile and the charming eyes and the inviting voice. She found herself leaning back in her chair smiling back a little bit, "For sure."

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><p>Snapchat had become their form of communication if they weren't within shouting distance of each other so he wasn't surprised when he received one from her on the way to the theatre. When he finally got off the subway he loaded it and saw four Starbucks grandes lined up. Each cup had a word so that the line read, "Happy tech week, Jack!" The Jack even had a comma and an exclamation point and he swore he could marry her.<p>

Instead he did what any guy with a huge crush on a girl did, he sent her Snapchat flipping her off with the caption, "Gonna be as hellish for you too." Almost immediately he got one back with her face slipped into a pout with the caption, "I know" written on it with a black and white filter over it.

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><p>"Davey, if your ass isn't out here in three seconds I will shove a live wire up your ass!" Jack shouted into a microphone from the sound booth so that his voice was amplified all through the theater.<p>

Katherine looked up in his general direction from the stage, her eyes narrowing against the stage lights and she grabbed a mic off the lead actor, "Stealing my lines, Kelly?"

Jack smiled cheekily even though she couldn't see him, "That's cuz your lines are the best, Ace."

"Hell yeah they are." She agreed before returning the mic to a confused actor.

He heard a panting noise behind him, "I'm here, I'm here sorry, hi, I was uh doing-"

"Clara the pianist?" Jack cut his best friend off with a smirk, failing at forcing himself to remain pissed at him.

Davey stayed quiet for a moment before shrugging, "Guilty as charged." He looked down and noticed he'd forgotten to zip his jeans and casually zipped them.

Jack scoffed, "Unbelievable. I've known you since high school and you've never gone this nuts over a girl. In fact, I don't think I've seen you go nuts over a girl until now."

"I could say the same about you. There's so much sexual tension between you and Katherine that you could give Beyonce and Jay-Z a run for their money." Davey sighed shaking his head.

Jack looked over at his friend incredulously, "When did you start listening to Beyonce?"

"Clara likes her." Davey said with a shrug. He shook his head, "Why don't you just ask her out already? You said you liked her right? And she likes you s-"

"She likes me?" Jack asked sitting up straight with wide eyes, "How'd you know?"

Davey shook his head, "I'm dating her best friend, moron."

"Clara the Pianist is her best friend?" Jack inquired.

"Yeah, I've told you this seven times. Literally. Seven, I've counted. You need to ask her out because Clara wants to double the moment you two happen." Davey reported as he fiddled with the soundboard.

Jack shrugged, "I don't know, man. She's stressed, I was thinking of waiting until after we opened."

"Do it." Davey said turning back to smile at his best friend, "You'll be happy." He waited a moment, quietly changing some of the levels on the board, "And if you cost me Clara because you're too scared to ask her out, I'll shove a live wire up your ass."

While Davey rubbed the back of his head, Jack told himself that Davey had earned the smack.

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><p>Backstage was officially nuts. The opening night audience had just gone home and the entire company was backstage celebrating. Jack was high fiving all of tech and was trying to settle them down to give them what Specs called "a Jack Kelly inspirational speech". But as he called for the boys to quiet down he felt a pair of hands grab his face and he was suddenly locked in a kiss with someone.<p>

His eyes widened in surprise when he realized that the person was Katherine.

All of tech boys whooped when he kissed her back with equal intensity. Eventually, she wrenched herself away from him and looked up at him, "Take me out for a drink." It wasn't a question.

"Yeah, I'd love to." He mumbled stupidly.

"Good. I've been waiting for that for weeks now." She smiled before kissing him again.


End file.
